One night last December, the chief resident physician at a hospital in the Iranian city of Gorgan was asked to consult on a baffling case: a patient was racked with a mysterious virus, which was advancing rapidly through his body.
Iran's elected government under President Hassan Rouhani is embroiled in an internal power struggle against hardline factions of the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps for control of the country's response to the COVID-19 crisis.
A little over four decades ago, when a Shia Muslim cleric named Ayatollah Ruhollah Khomeini emerged in Iran and on the world political stage as the head of an unprecedented theologico-political project, few people in the West realized that they were witnessing the gestation of a new ideological challenge to the liberal-democratic worldview. For decades after Khomeini launched his Islamist revolution in Iran, the world’s liberal-democratic states failed to grasp that Islamist radicalism was a direct ideological threat, even though from its inception it had proclaimed Western democracy as its main enemy.1
The Iranian economy has been struggling since the establishment of the Islamic Republic in 1979 for a number of reasons, including the government’s hardline foreign policies that challenge major world powers and their tensions with other countries in the Middle East.
Iranian courts since late April 2020 have sentenced at least 13 people to prison terms, apparently solely for peacefully protesting the Iranian forces’ deadly attack on a civilian airliner and the government’s initial denial of responsibility, Human Rights Watch said today. The authorities should halt all prosecutions that violate the right to peaceful assembly and protest.
This interview was conducted by Nasrin Bassiri (N.B.) with Reza Khandan (R.K.)
The Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps’ (IRGC) successful launch of the Noor (Light) satellite into space is a significant moment at a time when many countries, including Iran, are still grappling with the deadly COVID-19 virus. It marks a military advancement, an audacious move in the diplomatic poker game with Washington, and an effort to restore domestic political legitimacy after a series of blunders.
Nazanin Boniadi is an actress, activist and a member of the Board of Directors at the Center for Human Rights in Iran.
Initial data of Covid-19 mortality rates in the United States suggest that in several regions and cities, the virus hits minority communities harder than the general population.
On the rooftop terrace of her Tehran apartment building, 28-year-old Mojgan Hosseini’s fingers pluck the strings of her qanun, an ancient stringed instrument, bringing life to an Iranian capital stilled by the coronavirus.
